The film imagines Hitler living in modern-day Germany and aspiring to be a stand-up comedian. And if that wasn’t strange enough, the director, David Wnendt, made the film in a “Borat” style in which the Hitler character (played by Oliver Masucci) interacts with non-actors to capture their reactions.

Wnendt told The Guardian that the motivation behind the movie was to show that Hitler’s propaganda hasn’t completely gone away. The filmmaker said that people can’t “ignore the fact that we met many Germans who were quite ready to reconcile with him and see him as something of a father figure.”

Masucci described what he encountered while filming dressed as Hitler: “People clustered around me. One told me she loved me, and asked me to hug her. One, to my relief, started hitting me. There was also a black woman who said I scared her.”

The book the film is based on, written by Timur Vermes, sold 2 million copies in Germany alone when it was published in 2012. It has been published in more than 40 countries.